


Made Visible and Permanent

by raquelelpillo



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Time, M/M, Sports
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-06-01
Updated: 2010-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raquelelpillo/pseuds/raquelelpillo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[by chemical treatment]</p><p>At the beginning of a downward spiral, Nixon gets tangled up in a very different crowd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red Running Shoes

O1. Red Running Shoes

The dawning light following a sleepless night was too much for Lewis Nixon. Wherever he was—that was still blurry, addled by too-hot sunlight—he decided to sit down and close his eyes. He was drawing closer to the opposite bookend of life and he'd celebrated in self-destructive fashion. Friends of friends had provided the false I.D. He'd provided the willing mouth and blood to saturate. Somewhere along the journey downtown they'd splintered off to go home, to sleep, and he'd soldiered on alone until the black sky was brighter, bright enough to see his own stilted gait. Until his blood thrummed happily, alcohol teetering out, but the price of intoxication not yet paid. In his seventeenth year of misery he went down miserably, stumbling onto the edge of some stranger's yard and trying to keep his eyes open.

He did wonder how far he'd managed to barhop away from home, how small and worthless that manor on the hill would look if he could open his eyes. But—cold dew on the grass, head heavy and sinking, sun burning at his eyelids added up to sleep. Now. That he wouldn't argue.

 

White and red trimmed running shoes woke him. Couldn't be more than a few hours since sleep had struck him abruptly. Now someone was doing the same, tearing him from the black of dreamless sleep with a firm hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Running shoes on their feet, a few inches from his face. A pair of legs now kneeling next to him, bringing the flimsy hem of shorts into view. Bright green against skin that seemed too pink even in ridiculous morning light. No, red—that faint, cinnamon-red of freckles.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Nixon demonstrated he was still alive with a grunt, then, aided by the stranger's hand, rolled onto his back.

"Bright. _Fuck_."

He closed his eyes again and weakly covered his face with his hands. Now the price of intoxication was obvious, and the pleasant thrumming felt more like the atoms of his body vibrating apart. Until he might just separate into uncountable pieces. It was a wonder of a hangover. It probably hadn't helped not to sleep—not for a day, at least. Instead—drinking, swearing to impress, binging, running away, just to keep from thinking. The stranger remained quiet for a minute, then that hand was prying his own away from his face.

"'m not hurt," Nixon grumbled. He wanted to cover his face again. "Just drunk... Was. Wish I still was."

The stranger hummed. Didn't seem surprised. He shifted his weight, shoes squeaking on the wet grass, as his hand moved to Nixon's shoulders again. "Think you can sit up?" He was pushing before Nixon could answer, but raggedly they managed it. His head throbbed horrifically to a steady beat—maybe so loudly the stranger could hear it like pounding bass.

"'m just hung over," he clarified, hurting and mildly embarrassed.

"On my lawn," came the rather stoic answer. Nixon waited numbly, eyes still closed against the light, for the angry part of this equation: _Hey, asshole, off said fucking lawn._

The hand didn't tense, just moved away. Nixon thought he might actually get hit for stumbling onto somone's property—not that he hadn't weathered worse storms, or even that he cared in his state—but he wearily opened his eyes. Once the sunlight seemed bearable, the first thing he noticed was the burn of bright blue eyes watching him, then a young face, a patient, half-concerned pull to the mouth. Shortly-cut red hair, especially red against the white headphones trailing from his ears. One hung loose, and the bass line of the song and Nixon's skull throbbed in time. "Need a glass of water?"

Nixon closed his eyes again to consider his answer and it felt like heaven. He woke up again, his favorite activity, with that glass of water staring him in the face a few moments later. Still sitting on the lawn, he could tell from the dew soaking through his blue jeans, dripping from his hair. He sat back up under his own power and reached mutely for the water. Misfired and weakly gripped the stranger's knuckles instead.

"Goddamn it," he muttered, reaching again and that time succeeding.

"You sure you're okay?" the strange runner asked. "Do you know where you are?"

Nixon gulped the water down, sweat from the glass squeezing beneath his fingers. When he came up for air, he said, "Just not where I don't want to be." Unfortunately—as generous as the water had been—the cold in his stomach synchronized with his wet clothes and shivering set in. Not pathetic enough just to pass out in his lawn—no, no. Nixon couldn't choke back another complaint of, "Goddamn tired," before looking erratically up, catching sight of blue eyes raking him.

Stoic, redheaded runner with the green shorts and a lawn and presumably a faucet somewhere beyond there said nothing and took the glass from his hand. Nixon shut his eyes and mumbled, "Is Scout in trouble?"

"Come inside. You're soaked." The runner steadied Nixon momentarily and stood up, gripping his wrist. "Up."

"Said the stranger to the stranger." Nixon felt too sapped of all courtesy to comply. Too tired to accept kindness graciously. Heavy as an anchor. He squinted up at the cloudless sky and the skinny redhead centered in his view. Who, after a slight shake of his head, dropped the glass carefully and hoisted Nixon off the grass by both his wrists. Once Nixon found a toddler's kind of balance, battling weariness in his legs and the white noise of his empty head, those hands steadied him a final time, squeezing his shoulders. The runner cautiously drew them away and then offered his right in introduction.

"We don't have to be strangers. You did take a nap on my lawn in front of my window, after all," he said, glancing toward his open window, where he'd spotted a sleeping lump just before his morning run. "Dick Winters."

Nixon decided to answer only with, "Lewis," shaking his hand absently. "Pleasure to pass out on your property. But now that we're acquainted, let's get the hell inside. Think I stood up too fast—"

Nixon considered himself graceful for stumbling only once across the yard, only once letting nausea sweep up on him. Also lucky that the ugly view of home was too far to see here in the residential fringe—too far to see _him_.

\---

"Your name is just Lewis?"

Nixon studied the bright, vital red of the runner's sweater mirrored in his short ginger hair—counterclockwise whirl from the back—through his hands, clutching at his throbbing forehead. The damned headache was circling around his head, jerky and unpredictable like a crappy Doppler image. His damp hair still dripped on his fingers as he kneaded his temples, but, thanks to a modestly accepted offer of fresh clothes, at least his ass wasn't soaking wet. "Don't need the last name. It bores me."

"Like Madonna?"

Nixon snorted and lifted his head. "I prefer Cher, actually. Or Elvis."

Normally, nursing a record-setting hangover at a stranger's kitchen counter in borrowed jeans and t-shirt while said stranger scrounged up aspirin and nourishment would be awkward or surreal. But Nixon felt comfortably divorced from normality now, so, no problem. As evenly cleaved as the hemispheres of his brain currently felt, their grievances rattling in his skull. Winters—or 'Capt. Kick,' as titled on the back of the sweater—produced a bottle of aspirin, a sports bottle of water, and a banana and pushed them across the counter towards Nixon.

"Talk about gold, frankincense, and myrrh," Nixon said, flashing a skeptical look towards the fruit. Winters just blinked innocently at him.

"What's wrong?"

"Thanks for these," he clarified, pulling the sports bottle closer and uncapping the aspirin, "but I'm not really hungry."

"You won't feel better on an empty stomach," Winters answered. The corner of his mouth tugged, pulling neither up nor down, and he turned around again. Exactly what the gesture meant, Nixon didn't know, but he arched an eyebrow and watched him curiously. Winters opened the refrigerator and scanned the brightly lit shelves for something else. "If you don't like that, I can make something else. I can't promise caviar, though."

Nixon knocked back a few aspirin and smirked with the bottle pressed to his lips. "That's not a problem," he said once he'd chased it with a gulp of water. "And thanks for the help, but I'll be fine. Just the price I pay for a busy night. You've done enough for me."

Before Nixon could execute a smooth escape—exercise his carefully tailored charm and smile and leave without overstepping his welcome—Winters straightened up and pinned him with an expression of concern. It stopped Nixon before he could slip off the stool at the counter and make a clean break. "You're really alright? It's no trouble if you stay a while."

Nixon could not understand how a perfect stranger could be so hospitable to the alcohol-downed lump he'd found sprawled on his front lawn. Invite lump in, offer food, cooking. He hoped his shock wouldn't shine through. But as he did not move from his spot, it started to grow dangerously comfortable. "You hardly know me."

"Sure, but I know you could probably use a decent breakfast," the runner countered. "And maybe a ride home."

Nixon felt allergic to unmerited generosity, a condition especially aggravated by morning light. His headache swelled in proportion and he drove the heel of his palm against his brow to keep it quiet. "Won't your parents have something to say about a new boozed-up friend crashing their house? You seem like the parent's pride-and-joy type. It's not exactly what a good son does."

Winters pulled a carton of eggs from the fridge. "They're not home," he said, marking that fact with a tilt of the head and arched eyebrow. "I haven't eaten yet either, so you may as well stay. How do you like your eggs?"

In the absence of a better argument—and any energy to make it—Nixon let him have his way. "Scrambled."

Only when the butter had gotten hot and Nixon blearily watched it skate around the pan did he think to check the time. He began to turn to glance behind him where the heirloom grandfather clock would sit against the far parlor hall. Remembering where he was (and, more importantly, where he _wasn't_), he settled for the digital microwave readout just above that shock of bright hair as the runner split an egg on the rim of a bowl. A horrific-looking number beginning with seven.

"Holy shit," he muttered. He couldn't believe he was still conscious after two hours sleep. He couldn't believe he'd woken up in the first place.

Winters calmly shifted to look at him; Nixon dodged answering with a dismissive shake of his head. "Sorry, never mind."

As automatic as a twitch, Nixon sought to smother his nerves by grabbing the water bottle and swinging it up to his mouth. That same, curious flicker of motion zipped through Winters' mouth, lighting a look of muted recognition in his eyes. Was Nixon not staring through the mental stain of a night-long bender he might have seen it clearer, might have deemed immediate flight the better course of action than watching a stranger beat eggs for his benefit.

"If you don't mind me asking, what's the occasion?" Winters asked, turning to pour the beaten egg into the pan.

Bleary, aching, just a heavy eyelid away from unconsciousness, Nixon couldn't think of anything clever to skirt around the truth. "Honestly, there's no occasion. Blitzed for the hell of it. Trying to drink myself off the face of the fucking Earth." He scoffed tiredly. "Didn't know I could get a free meal out of it, though."

He could hear Winters snort quietly. "For the record, I'm not encouraging you."

"And I'm not complaining."

\---

Nixon had no fucking idea where he'd go when he left, but one more undeserved act of altruistic generosity might make him lose his breakfast. And then Winters would insist on something else, god knows – a blanket, a bowl of soup, an entire day of bedside nursing. Nixon wouldn't accept any more generosity.

And _especially_ not a ride home.

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure, eager beaver."

Winters seemed to consider all possibilities at once and intelligently came to the inevitable answer: Nix was purely stubborn. He sighed in resignation. The only sign of discontent lay in his pursed mouth, the anxious stance he took in the open doorway. Facing into morning light, his hair burned as red as his sweatshirt.

"Do you have a cell?" the runner asked abruptly. He clarified, after Nixon scrunched his nose in confusion, "In case you need help."

Nixon blinked dully and shook his head. "Nope. And don't worry, I won't be asking for it."

"Alright," Winters conceded, still staring him carefully in the eye. "If you'll be alright by yourself."

"Yeah. I will," Nix answered tiredly, hoping he didn't sound rude, overly eager to high-tail it out of there. "Thanks."

And on his aching legs, weary joints, and heavy feet Nixon turned and shoved his hands into the pockets of jeans he didn't own. They were a little long in the leg, but thankfully dry. The sun was horribly bright, flashing off the parked cars lining the street, and at his back still hung an annoying little cloud of concern, thick on his skin like humidity. He heard the runner shut the door but didn't look back. Nixon turned randomly to the west and let his weary feet decide where he'd collapse next.


	2. A Collapsible House

Winters again had company on the lawn the following night, but all of it planned. Carefully maneuvering through the crowd, the tide of hungry teammates surging into the back door, he settled onto the newly emptied picnic table. The backyard was packed with foldable chairs and the air filled with the thump and roar of AC/DC from Harry's stereo. For the third year, Winters and his family were hosting the pre-season cross-country dinner of spaghetti and pizza. Through the glass door he saw the line forming in the kitchen, each clutching a paper plate as they circled through.

"Hey, who doesn't love to puke up pasta the first day of practice?" Dick remembered Liebgott announcing with a grin in their sophomore year when the tradition first began. He also remembered it being somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Harry was the first to reemerge with food. He'd smartly set up camp in the kitchen with Dick's mother to get the best spot in line. It didn't hurt to be an insatiable flirt while she dished out portions, either. Spaghetti piled over top cheese pizza, crowded in by a giant square of homemade brownie and a stack of hamburger pickles. Harry's usual—and as usual, unpalatable, choice—never failed to amuse him. Dick shook his head as the pint-sized senior sat down beside him.

That earned him a playful look and a nudge of the elbow. "O Captain, My Captain, how about you? There are a lot of green freshmen that're piling it on in there. Nine, if I remember correct."

"Unlike you, of course." Dick smirked. "I'll wait until everyone's eaten."

"Suit yourself, then," he said. The brownie was the first to disappear, nearly whole, into his mouth. "Dent fink yur mudder ill seav yeu summ."

Hopeful to avoid any projectile bits of brownie, Dick chose to turn his head and casually survey the yard as he answered. After four years he'd learned to translate Harry-Talking-While-Eating flawlessly. "I'm not worried. We make extra every year just in case we can't contain your hunger." Harry's laughter was muffled but all the more boisterous through a mouthful of chocolate.

The glass door slid open again, the chatter and laughter and _clink clank_ of dishes swelling. There Speirs held it with his usual stoic nonchalance until Lipton managed to hobble out without dropping his dinner into the grass. Once past, Speirs even cautiously observed his gait as he walked alongside, oblivious to the playful leer and thoughtful smile turned his way. "You're oozing protectiveness, Speirs," Harry greeted them, his face painted with chocolate. "Looking very motherly today, even."

Speirs hardly ever missed a beat, and even fewer when it came to Harry's well-meaning razzing. "Why, need someone to wipe your face for you?" The two sophomores joined them on the opposite side of the picnic table, Speirs sitting as protectively close to his boyfriend as ever the past week, ever since he'd lost his footing on a steep gravel hill and wrenched his already troublesome left knee.

A flicker of amusement zipped through Dick's face—even as Harry licked his thumb and scrubbed his mouth nothing changed—before he turned to face Lipton. "How is it?"

"Still sore to run. Lots of ice and a little luck and I should be alright for our first race, though," he said. "My appetite's unaffected, thankfully."

Dick smiled. "A true sign of a runner's recovery. You tested it out today?"

"Against orders, but yeah," Lipton said, just as a flicker of frustration ran through Speirs' eyes, his mouth tightening around his teeth, obviously the disagreeing party. Harry chuckled through another mouthful of food and Speirs turned that wary expression on him.

Lipton heeded no mind, only pressed his lips together in a long-suffering smile. "There's not much else I can do, just keep pushing on and be careful about it."

"Good," Dick said. "Knowing you, you'll bounce back quickly. And I'll need your help, too, corralling all the freshmen this year and keeping them in line."

"Rowdy crowd you've managed to trick into joining," Speirs said. "They have no idea of what they're getting into, do they? Just what did you tell them this sport was about?"

The senior captain's brow twitched, as if he wasn't sure what he meant. "Camaraderie, hard work, and good sportsmanship," he replied cautiously and honestly, though he couldn't resist a ghost of a smile at the incredulous expressions that greeted him.

Another slam of the sliding door announced fellow senior Frank Perconte wandering over to the table, his plate filled with pizza and a mountain of baby carrots. "Really? 'Cause I told 'em it was sweaty chicks and short shorts." He slid comfortably in beside Speirs, who felt completely free to partake of his pile of carrots.

"You know that's not true, right? It's blood blisters, shin splints, Screamin' Injuns, and even more shin splints?" Harry asked. He reached across the half-warped picnic table and joined the raiding of the communal mountain of carrots. There was nearly half a pound of vegetable dip smack dab in the middle of his plate to feed everyone. After two years of mutual mooching he'd learned to simply bring enough for everyone, and everybody's lot was everybody else's lot.

"Well, yeah, but no one would join if _that_ was our slogan."

Lipton chuckled. "I thought it was, 'Our sport is your sport's punishment.'"

Harry's eyes lit up and he pointed eagerly at Lipton, a pickle still pinched in his hand. "No, no, this one's good: 'Running won't kill you… you'll pass out first!'"

"'If running were any easier, it'd be called football or basketball,'" Perconte suggested. "_That_ should be this year's motto. Has anyone actually seen those guys do anything at practice anyway? And they've got damn near eight coaches!"

"Speaking of coaching, where's our coach?" Dick asked, when, after the last of the team filed out into the background and milled together, making acquaintances, there was no sandy-brown mop of hair above the crowd. His mother stood in the doorway to observe the gathering, and their pet whippet Robin poked his head shyly out around her ankles. After a minute, the dog withdrew carefully into the house and his mother joined the team out on the grass, gravitating to Kitty, the effervescent girls' team captain.

"Oh, Coach Amos couldn't make it," Harry informed the table, while casually cleaning his mouth of chocolate. "His son is feeling sick again and they rushed him to the hospital yesterday. But I heard it's not as serious as the last time." He turned and flashed a quick, chocolate-free smirk at Dick, whose usual even expression was muddled with concern. "Looks like you're master of ceremonies tonight, O Captain, My Captain."

"Looks like," Dick replied absently, more occupied by worries for their coach's young son, who had begun a battle with leukemia the year before.

He remembered the first time he'd visited Amos' son, barely eight years old and as skinny as a toothpick, in a similarly tiny hospital bed. Coach had introduced them and his son's hand was small and slightly clammy as he shook it, with the clear tube of the IV protruding from the back of it. He'd looked up at Dick with unfazed optimism, a little pale but all smiles. Unlike Lewis—he suddenly remembered—who was pale and all sourness on the wet lawn, muttering beneath his breath. He wondered how both of them were doing at the moment. He was interrupted when Kitty wandered over to say hello and Harry startled so nervously he accidentally elbowed Dick in the ribs.

 

 

Again with the goddamned sun.

Nixon pulled himself from the uncomfortable nest of rumpled sheets and blindly lunged toward the window. "Fuckin' hell, fuckin' hell," he muttered to himself as he reached to adjust the blinds. He'd checked in at noon, pulling a perfectly crisp, folded hundred-dollar bill from his rumpled pocket. At noon plus ten minutes he'd collapsed onto the bed fully clothed and into a death-like sleep. The sun slunk lower and light glared in like an accusing finger as it fell toward the horizon. "Fuckin' _hell_." The cheap white blinds clattered together and the tiny room glowed a disgusting yellow-brown instead.

He fell back onto the starchy mattress and the two thread-count sheets and lay dead for another good chunk of time. When he woke up again, there was drool on the sheets and a cramp in his neck. That light was gone; the room had only a few traces of hazy orange streetlights. Nixon groaned wearily into the mattress and could not grasp just how completely fucked up he felt, though he was trying. There was just too much to wrap his head around, and his head was heavy and the inside was constantly swirling, telling him how hungry he was, how he ached, how sick he felt. Which was very in every category.

The red alarm clock readout burned near midnight.

His body was disjointed, too heavy, his mouth dry and unpleasant. He decided that sleep was not helping his situation. He'd rather spend it brooding and nursing a cigarette and drink if this was how nearly twelve hours sleep would leave him. Romantic as it was to fall apart alone in a trashy motel room, it stunk like something he didn't recognize and didn't care to know. He declared the three-day bender over. The downward spiral was an entirely different story, but this particular _drinking-dying-moping party_ was finished.

Nixon thrushed his hands through his hair and scrubbed them along his face as he sat on the edge of the bed. Just below hunger growled the instinct for nicotine, echoed by its brother alcohol. Luckily a few Lucky Strikes had still survived and he rummaged through his pocket for his lighter. No luck.

He grimaced in the dark, squinting through the murky light to see if he'd dropped it somewhere hours before, before he remembered the pressure of hands pulling his own from his face and a flash of bright white morning light. _The runner. Right. His jeans, not mine. Left it in mine, which I left there._

Nixon emerged from his withdrawal and hangover den and at the nearest gas station bought a cheap plastic butane lighter—one with a nice, ugly camouflage pattern, even. Burnt into that Lucky Strike as soon as he'd stuffed the change into the runner's pocket and stomped outside. Licked the smoke slowly within his mouth before letting it spill out, breathing absently into the fluorescent light. Somehow he knew he had to regain his rhythm, reconnect to whatever sanity was left to his name, because as he looked off into the dark and smoked, every part of him was separate and disagreeing, like Wilson's well-meaning League of Nothing Doing. It just couldn't go on for long without really beginning to mean something.

But for the moment, he decided to feed his other hungers and went wandering for decent food and a glass of whiskey, meaning be damned.

 

Nixon wanted—no, he fucking _craved_ his sunglasses. Days of binging and pity and rage did little for resting his eyes, and the the sun tomorrow wasn't going to simply crawl below the horizon because he willed it so. He wouldn't settle for gas station fare in that department. He needed his silver-edged aviators, he needed his Zippo, he needed his fucking camera. He was growing bored with his own pitiful state and maybe photographing his growing collection of cigarette butts and his proud middle finger in a downtown motel room would keep him occupied while he decided what to do next, being disowned and all that. Unofficially disowned—but officially where it counted, including the shrinking amount of money in his pocket. The runner's pocket.

For one of the first times in his life, Nixon carefully thumbed through his bills, counting, evaluating. No doubt looking like a dealer passing the time, cigarette nestled between his fingers as he licked a mouthful of smoke, little trails escaping through his teeth as he counted money alone. He exhaled fully and quickly refilled again, leaving the Lucky Strike pinched in his mouth. The remaining forty-two dollars brought him to the nearest late-night liquor store and to his pity-den he brought his friend Jim Bean and a collection of junk food.

He poured himself a glass and toasted an imaginary comrade. "Tomorrow we pierce through Europe's soft underbelly. Gallipoli, here we come," he muttered to no one and knocked his drink back.

Hopefully no one was home when he broke into his own house.


End file.
